May 30
2022
Monday Morning Read (Tuesday edition)
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This week’s post includes stories of interest from Sunday and Monday, to cover the holiday weekend. You can receive the entire WeeklyPost newsletter, which also includes a summary of our best reporting from the previous week, by subscribing here.
The Buffalo News tackled the subject of racism in Western New York. A very good companion piece to the story we published a couple of weeks ago. The New York Times profiled the pain of the killings on one Buffalo family.
Margaret Sullivan laments that the toll that media fragmentation means we’ll probably never see a lawless president brought to heel like we did during Watergate.
The nation that came together to force a corrupt president from office and send many of his co-conspirator aides to prison is a nation that no longer exists. It’s not just our politics that have changed. It’s also our radically transformed media environment.
Congressman Chris Jacobs has been railing against the Walt Disney Co. — while also pocketing profits as a shareholder, according to Business Insider. Jacobs made news on another front, announcing he’ll support an assault weapons ban and other reforms. That’s a no-no in Republican-land.
Also from Business Insider: Amazon, which wants to build another warehouse here, has overbuilt elsewhere.
The Buffalo Newspaper Guild took to Twitter last week to complain about its chain owner, Lee Enterprises. “We’ve lost about 20 positions since Lee’s shareholder meeting in March,” the Guild said. In a subsequent tweet, the union declared: “Lee Enterprises, claims to be nothing #LikeAlden Global Capital, the notorious fund that gobbles up local papers and spits out bones. So why does @LeeEntNews want to quietly cut Buffalo jobs and replace veteran employees with cheap labor from India?” My Twitter feed also informed me the departed include at least four of the paper’s photographers, taking a huge bite out of the department. A lot of talent has been walked out the door.
NPR broadcast two stories related to white supremacy and the radical right. One story focuses on the work being done locally to combat racism by a group called Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ). (Disclosure: My daughter Erin is executive director.) The second story reports on the large number of state legislators around the nation who have aligned with far right organizations.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported on Republican state legislatures in swing states that have embraced the Big Lie in an effort to undermine free and fair elections or started to retaliate against companies who are addressing climate change.
Stacker takes a look at a dozen stadium and arena deals around the country that relied on big public subsidies. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to our deal on the Bills stadium — for that, read this from our Mark Scheer — but it’s worth a look.
Companies talk about social justice while making big campaign donations to radical Republicans who are trying to roll back progress. The Washington Post uses North County Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to illustrate the hypocrisy.
